Volume 6: Anaphase
Issue 7: Stranger at Chapel High
Jannette Adrian Churchwell
By Nova
As I surveyed it from the park, I was struck with the feeling that I could see past Chapel High’s ostentatious exterior—uncovering the cracks in the foundation. Chipped paint, a cracked window here and there; the school desperately needed a renovation. Right now, it looked dilapidated, worn-out, battered…
Haunted.
Hundreds of students streamed through the front doors: school was out. I wondered how many of them had been replaced, like Holly or Ramirez, and how many doppelgängers could be wandering out into the streets… But no one seemed to be behaving oddly, or acting out of place. Instead, the clattering muzak of voices chatting, shouting, arguing, and saying goodbye rose from the crowd. Everything looked normal.
Which, of course, made the whole situation worse. Not-Ramirez had seemed to imply that he wasn’t alone and—even if my powers could let me see their true selves with a touch—I was sure that they had all figured that out by now. They’d be prepared for me, lying in wait… Especially if I was right about them hiding somewhere in Chapel High. Was that monster me and Holly saw last night their “natural” state?
There was only one way to find out.
And, hopefully, Ramirez and Holly were here somewhere. Alive.
I sat on a metal bench, nestled underneath a sad-looking palm tree. I shivered in the cool air as the crowd of students slowly dispersed from the school. In my hoodie’s pocket, I nervously toyed with the cold metal of my baton, hidden from sight. I couldn’t wait here until night—for the school to be entirely deserted—but the fewer civilians around, the better…
After about twenty minutes I couldn’t wait any longer. I had ended up reaching out to a few heroes, and even texted Ripple. Even the ones who were in the city couldn’t make it now and repeated the same refrain: “WAIT FOR ME.” But I couldn’t. My right foot danced to an anxious beat as I struggled to stay still on the bench. The crowds had thinned to the point where I was confident that the only students left in the school were part of clubs or sports teams, and hopefully not roaming the halls. I stood from the bench and hurried toward the building. Hopefully I still had time.
None of the students even glanced at me as I passed them by and I was briefly thankful that—as messy-looking as I was—my small stature left people thinking I was a teenager. Once inside, I immediately went to retrace my steps to that dead end hallway. I had no idea where the creature me and Holly saw came from, or where it could be hiding—but I did know where it had disappeared.
Fortunately, the halls were mostly deserted, and I only saw a few students hanging around as I stalked toward my destination. I kept one hand free to strike at anything that got near, while the other clenched the baton in my pocket. I knew that my powers might not be reliable against these things—since their biology was so alien to me I hardly knew where to strike—so hopefully some good, old fashioned blunt force trauma would put them down…
But, when I rounded the corner, to that familiar looking dead end, I saw… nothing. My shoulders sagged. It wasn’t much of a lead, but it was the only one I had to go on. I wasn’t sure what I expected—like the creature would be seriously sitting around during school hours—yet, for the past hour of sleep-deprived desperation, I had genuinely thought that there would be some sort of clue here. However, even when I hoisted myself up to have a closer look at the air vent the creature had disappeared down, nothing new stuck out to me. It didn’t even look like the grille had been screwed back on…
And only now I realized, through the fog of sleep-deprived anxiety, that the officer who’d reported to Ramirez that nothing was amiss last night—the one that had riled Ramirez against me—had probably been replaced…
And I had left Holly alone with him…
I still didn’t know whether or not I was dealing with some kind of parasite or shapeshifter. After what Not-Ramirez had said about Holly being “safe for now,” I was leaning toward some kind of shapeshifter that had taken the original. If she were replaced in this school, she could still be here… somewhere. I had to find her.
I turned around and set out again through the halls. I needed a map of Chapel High. I knew that if I could track down an evacuation map, pretty much every nook and cranny should be on it. I started scanning for fire extinguishers, alarms… anything that may have a guide for students looking for an escape route during a disaster…
Instead of a map, I saw Not-Ramirez—flanked by two police officers striding towards me. Their faces were calm, focused, and their eyes locked on me.
Uncertain what to do, I turned around and walked the other way.
I heard them behind me, slowly gaining as I strode away from them. My head spun as I weighed my options. Fight them here? I’d win, easily probably, but there were enough civilians around that I could be exposed, or someone could get hurt. Run? Not-Ramirez would probably just start shouting and chasing me again; it’d just be a repeat of our earlier encounter. That left me with…
Hide.
The moment I rounded the next corner, I started into a sprint. Behind me, my pursuers broke out into a run as well. But I was faster. My shoes pounded on the tile floor beneath me and—without looking behind me—I could hear Not-Ramirez and the others silently following behind the corner. They weren’t shouting… yet. I needed to get out of sight before they could make a scene. Before they could see me, I turned to charge down the next hallway. Hopefully they wouldn’t be able to tell which hal-
Wait, Camilo?
He rounded the corner at the same time as me. I slammed into him at a full sprint, sending us both sprawling. I immediately scrambled to my feet, shaking off the pain as I healed the nasty bruising his elbow left on my stomach. He was still on the ground, clutching his nose. A faint trickle of blood slid down his lip.
Without thinking, I grabbed his arm and scanned through his body with my power. His cells, thankfully, were all normal, and I didn’t see any sign of the alien organ I had detected in Not-Holly and Not-Ramirez. “C-Camilo?” I stammered. “A-are you alright?”
“Wha-Jannette?” he asked, his face a mixture of surprise and pain. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
I could hear Not-Ramirez and the other two Not-Cops running down the hallway behind me. I couldn’t leave Camilo; if they found an injured kid alone here who knows what they’d do. And I wasn’t about to use the kid as bait either…
“Come on,” I hissed, pulling him to his feet. “No time to explain. Be quiet!”
“What?” he asked, his nose beginning to clog with blood. “I think you bwoke my nose!”
“It doesn’t look that bad to me,” I muttered. My power traced through his body, subtly mending his broken nose and sealing ruptured blood vessels. “I bet it’ll stop bleeding pretty quick,” I added, eyeing an open classroom door. I glanced behind me. Not-Ramirez hadn’t rounded the corner yet. Dragging Camilo with me, I barged in and turned off the lights.
“What’s going on?” Camilo hissed, as I dragged him to the ground. As far as hiding places went, it was a pretty terrible one. We were sitting on the floor of a dark classroom—out of view of anyone passing by, but clearly visible if you stuck your head in the room. I had to hope Not-Ramirez didn’t think to do that…
“Come on, what’s going on?” Camilo asked again.
I hushed him. “Quiet. We need to hide. I’ll explain-”
I heard footsteps approaching the room and we both fell silent. Not-Ramirez stalked into the room, and scanned it like a spider surveys its web. For a moment, I saw his eyes pass right over us: there was no way he couldn’t see us, the room wasn’t that dark… My muscles tensed for action, my hand going for my baton…
Not-Ramirez turned around. He left without saying a word.
“I-I don’t know how… he didn’t see us…” I muttered. Maybe Not-Ramirez and those other doppelgängers had worse senses than most humans? It was something to consider for later…
“What’s going on?” Camilo hissed again. “Are you going to tell me why you have a cop looking for you?”
“That’s not a cop,” I said.
“Is… Is that supposed to explain things?” Camilo looked increasingly bewildered.
I rose to my feet and took a deep breath. I considered, for a moment, telling him everything, but decided against it. He didn’t need to know about my powers… “I-I…” I stammered, thinking of the best choice of words. “There’s… a monster in Chapel High,” I finally said.
Camilo, surprisingly, groaned. “What, another one?”
“Y-yes,” I said. “Those aren’t cops, they’re… doppelgängers. Shapeshifters, too… I think. We saw a monster last night-”
“Uh, who’s we?”
“Holly,” I said. “And me,” I added. “She asked me to come to the library last night because-”
“Wait, Holly the librarian?” Camilo asked, raising an eyebrow. “How do you know her?”
“I-I play Icons with her all the time? I mean, haven’t you guys seen us playing? Why do you think I left while we were leveling up our characters a few days ago?”
“You mean that goth girl? I thought…” Camilo trailed off, looking quite bewildered.
“I know she looks different when she’s not wearing makeup, or when she’s in her work clothes, but she doesn’t look that different,” I muttered. Sure, the different outfits did give her entirely different vibes, like how Work-Holly was professional, cute, perky even… while Goth-Holly looked almost mysterious; the way her black lips moved with each word, and…
I shook my head. I was here to save Holly, not… think about her.
Camilo stared off into space, like his entire world had been shaken—not by the revelation that there were monsters stalking the school, but that Holly was goth. “So wait, just to get this straight, Goth-Holly is the same as Librar-”
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“We don’t have time for this!” I hissed, “Real-Holly has been kidnapped and replaced by this doppelgänger. Same with those cops and God knows who else.”
Camilo’s eyes narrowed. “Alright, say I believe you…”
“You don’t trust me?”
“I mean, do you have any evidence?”
“I-I…” Did I really have any evidence? Other than what my powers told me, or, quite frankly, hearsay?
“Look…” I sighed. “The only proof I have is that people aren’t… acting right. Holly first, then that cop. I know these people. They wouldn’t act like this. You gotta admit that what you just saw was weird, right?”
Camilo rose to his feet and paced the room for a moment. “Alright,” he finally said, “that was weird. But that doesn’t mean-”
“I know, I know… but let’s at least get you out of here,” I said, standing to peer out the doorway. “It isn’t safe with them around, and I need to find Holly before it’s too late…”
“Find Holly?” Camilo said, “I get the cops might be doppelgängers, but why not call, uh… heroes, or something?”
“I-I don’t know how,” I quickly said. “Plus, it’d take too long for them to get here, even if I could call them,” I added.
Camilo sighed, but didn’t say anything right away.
“I need to save her,” I continued. “I know everything I said sounds crazy but-”
“No, I get it,” Camilo said. “We’ve already had two monster attacks at this stupid school, why not a third one?”
“So you believe me?”
“I… I’m willing to trust you, especially if people’s lives are at risk, like you say…”
“Then I need to get you out of here, to somewhere safe.”
“Do you seriously think you can take on a monster-”
“Monsters at this point, I think…”
“Okay. So, monsters, all by yourself?”
I wasn’t sure, but I liked my chances—not that I could tell Camilo that. “I’m not trying to fight them, I’m trying to figure out where they’re keeping Holly!”
“Can’t a hero-”
“It could take hours for a hero to get here, I need to do thi-”
“Wh… What about the… those heroes who go to this school?” Camilo asked.
“T-the Chapel Trio? E-even if I knew how to contact them-”
“Instagram!” Camilo exclaimed, his smile lighting up his face.
“W-what?”
“They have an Instagram account… They made a post like a month ago on the Confessional.” He pulled out his phone and began typing away at it.
“The… Confessional?” I was beginning to feel the conversation get away from me.
“It’s an Instagram thing where Chapel students post… You know what, it’s really not important. What matters is that I know the ‘Chapel Trio’ looks at it, ‘cause that’s where they made their post.”
“B-but they’re just kids, right? That’s the rumor? I can’t get them invol-”
“At least they have powers! If you walk in there you’re just going to get eaten.” His expression darkened. “Like Mr. Howells…”
I groaned. This kid wasn’t going to make this easy. “Fine,” I said. “If it makes you happy, let them know what’s going on. I’m still going to go save Holly, with or without heroes backing me up.” And hopefully I could take down the monsters, too, before the Trio rolled in and got themselves hurt.
Camilo’s expression didn’t change. “Do you even know where she is?” he asked, finishing up whatever he was typing on his phone and slipping it back into his pocket.
“I… No, I don’t,” I admitted. “But I think she’s somewhere in the school, somewhere where these things could hide her away…”
Camilo looked pensive, his brows furrowing. After a pause, he said, “If they’re here, they… They have to be in the basement.”
“Basement?” I asked. It would make sense; a basement could provide the doppelgängers a hideout, with plenty of access to the rest of the school. But I hadn’t seen any signs pointing underground while I’d been here.
“Yeah, basement. It’s mostly just pipes and stuff, maintenance things you know? No one goes down there unless they need to fix something.”
“I see…” That had to be it: the perfect hiding place for these monsters. “W-where is it?” I asked.
“You’re not going to tell me you want to go down there, right?” His eyes, full of concern, met mine.
“What do you think?” I asked, not looking away.
Camilo sighed. Then, the tension from his face released, changing into an expression of determination. “I’ll take you there,” he said. “Just follow me.”
“No, just tell me and get out of here,” I countered. “I can’t put you at risk any-”
“I’ll be fine,” he interrupted. “They’re looking for you, not me, right?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You’re not coming down there with me, alright?”
He raised his hands in a defensive gesture. “Wasn’t planning on it.”
I nodded. “Fine. Lead the way.”
We darted out of the room and down the halls, carefully keeping an eye out for Not-Ramirez. “It’s this way,” Camilo said, pointing down the hall.
“How do you know about the basement anyways? I can’t imagine they let students down there if it’s all maintenance stuff…” I asked.
Camilo smirked. “There’s some unmarked doors on the first floor, usually locked but I had a friend who snuck down there. Stole some janitor’s keys and went after theater practice. They told me all about it.”
“Had a friend?”
His face suddenly fell. “Yeah, maybe.” He paused for a moment. “I don’t know.”
“I-I’m sorry-”
“It’s not something we need to worry about right now,” he muttered.
I nodded, but didn’t say anything. Camilo didn’t give any indication whether or not we were close to our destination, yet the halls we passed through were deserted. It looked like pretty much all the kids had gone home by now, except those inside the few lit classroo-
“Camilo, there you are!” came a familiar, sing-song voice behind me. I nearly jumped a foot into the air. I spun around to see Amber standing at the end of the hall.
She smiled broadly at us. “It’s been, like, crazy here. Did you see those three cops? I was worried that you and Flory-worry had gotten in trouble… And Jannette, is that you?” she said it with such genuine concern that I let my guard down a little bit.
But Camilo had tensed up beside me. My powers sensed a sudden surge of adrenaline run through him, but his face gave a strained smile. “We’re fine. Thanks for… caring,” he said.
“Of course,” Amber said, striding towards us. “Things feel, I don’t know, tense right now.”
“Things are always tense with you around,” Camilo muttered.
Amber giggled. “I guess so. Maybe I’m just being oversensitive…”
Camilo raised an eyebrow. “You? Oversensitive? In what universe?”
Again, she giggled. “I’m just looking out for you guys,” she said. She turned toward me, “What’s up with you, Jannette? What brings you here?”
I gave her the best smile I could muster. “Just here to see Holly,” I said, patting her on the shoulder.
Amber recoiled from my touch, but too late. I was getting good at scanning for that alien organ and instantly found it nestled in Amber’s—or, rather, Not-Amber’s—abdomen. She took a sudden step back from me, but kept smiling. Clearly knowledge of my powers had spread amongst these doppelgängers, however many there were now…
“Well, I hope you find her soon,” Not-Amber said with such a playfully cloying tone I wanted to punch her in the face in front of Camilo.
“Me too,” I retorted, my voice icy.
“Well, I need to get home,” Not-Amber said, turning to walk away. “See you arou-”
“Hey, wait,” Camilo interjected. “Remember what you texted me and Florian at lunch… ‘Meet me in the library?’ Something about our… homework?”
“Of course, I’m really sorry I couldn’t make it-”
“Yeah, I know, something came up with Reagan or whatever,” Camilo said. “You texted us.”
Not-Amber nodded. “So… what’s the problem?”
“It’s just… Well, I just remembered that I saw Jazmine and Reagan together at lunch. Without you.”
Not-Amber smiled. “Weird,” was all she said. She turned around and walked away. I kept my eyes on her until she disappeared, not trusting her to leave us alone until she had rounded the corner out of sight.
Me and Camilo exchanged looks. “I don’t know how you put up with her…” I slowly started.
“She has her moments,” Camilo muttered, though he didn’t seem happy about it. “But that…”
“…wasn’t Amber?” I finished, already knowing the truth.
“No.”
“H-how could you tell?” I asked.
“It’s… stupid. But the second she opened that stupid mouth of hers I knew… it wasn’t her.”
“How?”
“The real Amber wouldn’t ever say she was worried about me,” Camilo muttered. “She was too… nice back there.”
I nodded. “She was definitely… off. You’re right; that wasn’t her.”
“An Amber doppelgänger is loose in the school… Wait, do you think they have her too?” he asked, suddenly panicked.
“Probably,” I said. “We need to save her, Holly… Everyone who’s been replaced.”
We started walking again. “How many doppelgängers do you think there are?” Camilo asked.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But Not-Amber brings my count up to five, at least.”
“That’s a lot of monsters…”
I nodded. “And I have no idea how long Holly, Amber and the others have until…”
“Y-you sure they’re still alive?” Camilo asked, his voice cracking slightly.
I met his eyes. “I’m sure, and I’ll save them.”
Camilo nodded silently and led me down one final hallway. We stopped in front of an unmarked door, dirty and gray. “This is it,” Camilo said.
I reached for the handle. It opened easily. “Is it usually unlocked?”
Camilo shook his head. “Maybe it’s so doppelgängers without keys can get in and out?”
“Maybe…” Looking through the doorway, I saw a dimly lit flight of concrete stairs leading underground. “One way to find out,” I muttered, taking my first steps down.
Camilo took a step to follow behind me. “What are you doing?” I hissed. “You need to get out of here, call those Chapel heroes if you have to but get out of here.”
Camilo shook his head. “At least let me see what’s down there. I’ll run first sign of trouble.”
I groaned, but simply nodded. I didn’t have time to argue with the kid right now—the doppelgängers had to know we were coming, and if they wanted to make good on their threat to hurt Holly and Ramirez…
We stepped deeper into the bowels of Chapel High. The basement was a humid, dank series of twisting passages flanked by unpainted walls and rows and rows of pipes. The air here deathly still, abuzz and rumbling to the entire school’s heartbeat. But the deeper into the basement we reached, this rhythm was disturbed with a wet… flexing sound. Like something organic shifted slightly back and forth…
And, rounding the corner, we saw it. A twisted network of slimy, blue-gray webbing stuck to the walls and floors of the room ahead of us.. It pulsated slightly, flexing to some unknown beat. But worse than the slimy webs were its contents. In twisted, half-cocoons within the web, I saw Holly, Ramirez, and even Amber. All stripped naked, and—best as I could tell—alive and unconscious. Near them were more than ten others, most of whom I recognized as being a part of Ramirez’s contingent of cops from last night, but there were others I didn’t recognize. A few adults, but the rest were just teenagers…
A wave of nausea washed over me. Amber wasn’t the only student to disappear.
I turned to Camilo. “You need to-” I started, before I noticed that he… wasn’t there.
I looked to see if he was behind me, or hiding somewhere and… nothing. I didn’t even hear any footsteps; it was like the kid had disappeared into thin air.
Weird, but good. Hopefully he had kept to his word that he would run at the first sign of danger. He could get out of here, and maybe even call for help. Ideally, however, I’d be finished long before it was needed.
I started toward the web. It looked entirely organic; hopefully whatever it was made out of wasn’t too alien for my powers to work on it. I glanced around the room to see…
Rapid footsteps pounded out of the darkness to my right. I barely rolled out of the way from the shock prods of a taser. To my left, a rather familiar fist shot out of the darkness and struck me in the jaw. It didn’t hit particularly hard, but still sent me backwards in surprise. My two assailants met in front of me, blocking my way to the web.
Not-Ramirez and Not-Holly smiled down at me. I slowly backed away. “We knew you couldn’t leave things well enough alone,” they said in unison.
I shuddered seeing my two friends puppeteered like that, but stopped in my place at the sound of footsteps behind me. Not-Amber, the Not-Cops, and other doppelgängers stood behind me—blocking my escape route.
“Did you really think you could save them?” Not-Ramirez asked.
“We know you. We know what you can do, and there are too many of us now,” the rest said in unison—their joint voices reverberating against the walls and through the pipes.
I glared at Not-Ramirez, grabbed my baton and extended it out in a single motion. “I don’t care,” I muttered.
The doppelgängers’ smiles broadened.